1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an article information printer which performs printing on various types of continuous paper.
2. Description of the Related Art
In large-scale retail stores or physical distribution, articles are managed on the basis of labels (including tags), which are attached to the articles so as to display article codes, article names and other article information items. The labels are issued by using an article information printer which prints the article information on a roll of continuous paper. A typical article information printer receives, from a host computer, various control commands, such as a label size setting command, a feed command, a format command, a label data command, etc., and performs a process of issuing labels according to the control commands.
The label size setting command contains size data representing a feed length equal to the distance between the front ends of adjacent label regions in the continuous paper, a label length equal to the distance between the opposite ends of each label region, and a space length equal to the rear end of the first label region and the front end of the second label region. The size data is used to determine the size of a printed pattern and to control the paper feed of setting the front end of each label region to a printing position.
Conventionally, the article information printer need not receive a label size setting command again to issue labels of the different contents but of the same size. In this case, the size data is retained in the printer until a new label size setting command is supplied, and used for a control of printing.
However, to retain the size data, power must be continuously supplied to the printer. The operator of the host computer is unable to omit the transmission of the label size setting command after another one uses the printer, since the operator cannot confirm whether the size data is erased due to an interruption of the power supply. If the transmission of the label size setting command is omitted where the size data is erased, a printing error occurs. At this time, the label size setting command must be supplied together with the other control commands. Further, such a printing error often occurs also when the transmission of the label size setting command has been erroneously omitted at the time of replacing the continuous paper with another type. This gives the operator the impression that the conventional article information printer has but low operability.